Persuasive Writing Unit

Now we will be focusing on another type of writing called Persuasive writings.

Persuasive writing can take many different forms like letters or speeches or reviews and the all these different forms have at least on important characteristic in common. That they are all trying to persuade the reader.

This is actually my favorite type of writing because sometimes when I’m not here at Dalton I like to write movie reviews for a magazine.

Develop Review Ideas: Books Restaurants Movies Video Games

- Judgments about of taste, texture, smell, appearance of food, service, and atmosphere.- Comparisons of restaurants that are similar.- Reaction to story/film characters, authors, or genera- The quality of the graphic images Conclude with conversation - What is the power of a review? Start thinking over the weekend - what review you want to do?

* Send email to the parents about review projectLesson Two: (Examples)Teaching point: Use mentor text to introduce format and guidelines to writing reviews. Begin to brainstorm ideas for reviews.

Guiding Questions: What makes the review interesting, not interesting. What makes you want to keep reading, what doesn’t? So what do reviews contain?

Brainstorm of Ideas: In bullet point, not complete sentences, write down some possible ideas that you liked to review.Introduce more details on possible options:

Books: - Description of characters, setting and plot, - Along with opinion about author, writing style, - Overall was it interesting? Why or why not? Movies: - Description of characters, setting and plot, - Along with opinion about director, actors performance, filmmaking style, - Choice of music, script, - Overall was it interesting? Why or why not? Restaurant and food, - Description of service, prices, atmosphere, taste, and appearance of food, appearance of restaurant, - Opinion the entire dinning experience. - Included descriptions like I was greeted by a cheerful hostess. Video game review: - Often compare newer games with older games - What is the game about: Description of characters, setting and plot - Objective of the game - Describe the graphics, trick moves, - Difficulty - Opinion Overall Gameplay experienceLesson Three: (start with an outline)Teaching point: Writers use outlines to organize their ideas to help the writing process. Students will complete the graphic organizer.

- Introduce outlines as a method for organizing our thoughts. Writers will do this so that the process of writing doesn't feel chaotic. - Show pre-made outline on smartboard. and then model working from the outline as a class.- Hand out the graphic organizers to the class and have them work on their outline.

Lesson Four (Rough Draft)

Teaching point: When writing a rough draft, you want get it down. Students don't need to be so careful with spelling or punctuation. Editing will come later.

- Using the outline students will transfer work their work to a rough draft.- Use class outline as a model for transferring the work.- Allot majority of time to writing.

Lesson Five: (Elaboration) Teaching Point: Sentences with rich detail are often more engaging and will hook readers interest.

Stress importance of Details: Teacher takes model rough draft and reads through it, realizing that it lacks adjectives. - Quick explanation of adjectives/juicy words. - Ask students to list juicy words as teacher writes them on the board- Model how to add adjectives and juicy words to rough draft- Student return to their reviews and add juicy words and adjectives * Extension - Adding Quotes: Give the option for students to find a quote for their review. Teacher explains the use of quotes and how to include them by modeling with the class sample review. Possible quotes can come from:

The Chef

The actors

The directors

The movie

The book

The characters

Other critics

Lesson Six: (Writing Catching Leads)Teaching Point: The first sentence is sometimes the most important because that's all it takes to lose a reader. Start review with an intriguing, suspense-building sentence. Sometimes that may be a quote or a strong opinion

Start a review in a catchy way: Ask students what does it mean to be catchy? Why is it important to start the review in a catchy way?- Return to mentor text reviews and underline the catchy starter.- Students then rotate generating various catchy openers.

Teaching Point: Reviews with strong endings wraps up the piece by summarizing the opinion or leaving it with a rating that tells readers clearly how you felt.

- Use mentor text to see how reviews choose to end their pieces.- Discuss ways to end the review:

How would you want a review to end?

Share some ways you might end a review?

Students refer back to mentor text and discuss different strategies for ending a review. Student may chose to summarize the review and give a rating systems.

Lesson Eight: Comparison sentences (Making it persuasive)Look at example review and highlight interesting comparison sentence - Who is the target audiences. - You can state “you may like it if you are the kind of person who…” - “Only for ages between 5 -10 because” - “Adults wont like it because” - “This movie was made to entertain kids, but it will entertain adults too”

After students highlight the different comparison sentences in their mentor text, they then go back to their reviews and begin to write with a strong persuasive voice!

- If you liked _________ then you will love __________ - Most kids who liked ___________ also liked __________ - If ________ is a three star out of ______ , then this is a ________ star out of _________.

Lesson Nine: (checklist for reviews)

- Example how you can go back to your review and compare it to the quality/feature checklist for reviews. - Stress importance of looking over work before sending it out to the real world. - Now students go back and look over their work. - Pair up and read over each others work. Share with a partner and have them look over the checklist.Lesson Ten: (Correcting minor errors) - Check work once more. - Explain the importance of editing and not having spelling errors. - Capitalize the first letter of people’s first and last names. - Capitalize each word in a restaurants name, movie, book, video game title. - Capitalize the start of every sentence.